A day of rest…

Sort of.

For the past week, Mr. Painted Quilt and I have been spending anywhere from two to four hours a day working outdoors and admittedly, we’re both tired.  We decided to take today off to relax and chill.

Our house is situated on approximately five acres of land, most of which is to the rear of the house, workshop and barn. 

When we purchased the house back in December of 2010, we knew that the grounds, almost non-existent flower beds and over grown and neglected shrubs needed a lot of work, some of which we started last spring. 

When I was diagnosed with cancer, many of our plans were put on hold.

This spring, when I was given a clean bill of health, we went at it with a vengeance.

The orange azalea and climbing hydrangea that we planted last spring are doing wonderfully.

So are the many perennials in the front garden.

To give you some perspective of our property, this is the walkway on the left side of the house.  The white building on the left is the workshop and storage area where the tractor, tools and gardening equipment reside. 

Beyond that is what we refer to as the “back 40”, comprised of about three acres of cleared land and an acre of bush. 

This past week we have been planting trees and evergreens back there and have tilled up two new flower beds and an area where we are going to plant about a dozen blueberry bushes.  Those new areas are still a work in progress and we’re hoping to finish them this week.

In the mean time, Les Girls have been growing rapidly.  Here they are at 8 days old…

and here they are this morning at 12 days old.  They are getting much taller and as a result, we’ve have had to move them from our mud room to the workshop and into a larger box. 

If you enlarge the picture you should be able to see their wings starting to feather out.  It’ll be another four weeks at least before we can transfer them to the chicken coop in the barn.

I’ve even been able to fit in a little sewing and stitching in the evenings…when I can keep my eyes open.  I joined a pin cushion swap on the Jo Morton Stitchers board and here’s what I’ll be sending off to my partner tomorrow.

Yesterday was market day and I was able to pick up some organic lettuce, cherry tomato and hot pepper plants.

Below are the tomato plants that I grew from seed.

In my travels, these perennials managed to follow me home and are patiently waiting on the potting bench for the new beds to materialize.

All of the rhubarb was gone about a week ago and look at what has appeared since then! 

I picked a slew of the larger stalks this morning and decided to make another batch of stewed rhubarb.

I ended up with about 6 cups of chopped rhubarb to which I added about a half a cup of water and one and a half cups of Splenda.

I then cooked the rhubarb over medium heat for about ten minutes…

until it stewed down…

then added a box of light strawberry jell-o powder…

and stirred it into the rhubarb mixture.

Serve it hot on top of vanilla ice cream or chilled on toast. 

Delicious!

Guess what we’re having for dessert tonight?